This piece of writing is not a negative review of the film. Instead, it is a clarification of why I think those fan boys who rank this movie up there with Children of Men and Blade Runner(even Matrix). These people are either on the District 9 studio’s payroll or have never seen the movies mentioned.
The first half of the movie is basically throwaway. It’s this mockumentary that supposedly frames the plight of the prawns into some kind of relevance. But it’s really just a lot of background story. The movie does nothing more for the morays of expatriate, refugee status, or whatever social commentary it’s trying to make beyond the assortment of interviews meant to set up the second half of the story. It’s just a cute premise that serves as back story for the "real" movie.
The "real" movie starts the moment Wikus van der Merwe(Sharlto Copley) finds the tube of liquid and gets infected. The camera calms down and the "documentary" camera gets replaced by a neutral camera and cinematic action style we’re all familiar with. The shift in perspective is disconcerting. What POV are we really seeing? It’s like a movie within the movie.
The movie is oddly dispassionate and unemotional. While the CG character animation is top notch, I never cared for the prawns, for the most part they seemed like a bunch of random bugs running away and on a rampage and only the father and son prawns were mildly sympathetic. There was no villain I really hated - the MNU mercenaries were just nameless thugs and the head of MNU / the father was never much of a character. I loved no characters either. I liked the choice for Wikus has an atypical hero, uncaring, selfish, nerdy bureaucratic type. He’s different enough to be interesting but I can’t say I rooted much for him or loved the guy - except at the very end of the movie when he has a change of heart and has his orgasmic heroic battle like every good action hero must do. His wife seemed hardly a character at all so his empathy with and from her had little weight.
Lots of stuff made no sense. Why did the prawns give up all their weapons? For cat food? Why didn’t they just take what they wanted? Why did the command center drop down from the ship when it was such a pain to get it back up again? It was never clear at what point they were at with some/most/all prawns getting moved to the new concentration camp.
Overall it lacked the thematic unity of great science fiction like "Children of Men" or "2001", movies where I felt deeply involved with the characters. I can’t believe some fans and reviews put it in that league.
The mockumentary reminded me of independent and student films like "American Zombies" and others of that genre. But the devolution of the movie into a well done but typical action sci-fi flick seems to give the movie a schizo personality, with competing tonalities.
Camera work, while not Cloverfield shaky, was kind of deliberate bad shaky video and can make you sick as it did me.
Had this story been developed with a little bit of more intelligence, and rather more classic sci-fi twist, the author had a shot at an "instant classic". In this case, the ok beginning was turned into a mediocre action packed chase, with some weak spots in that as well.
I was mildly entertained by the film, but my review is in response to the surprising laudations given to it by the reviewers and fans. I wonder who wrote those and why? Possibly one of the most audacious Sci-Fi films of the summer, but it lacks the thought and conviction for it to be anything more.